


Don't Shy Away

by StarkAstarte



Category: Cobra Kai (Web Series), Karate Kid (Movies)
Genre: 1980s, But We Know It's Canon, Canon Divergence, Halloween, M/M, TeenLawRusso, lawrusso
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:47:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27315742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarkAstarte/pseuds/StarkAstarte
Summary: It's been ten months since the All-Valley when Halloween rolls around again. Johnny drops in on an unsuspecting LaRusso. He still looks the same. Like a baby animal that bites.
Relationships: Daniel LaRusso/Johnny Lawrence
Comments: 61
Kudos: 211





	1. This Is The Light On My Face

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OwnThyself](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OwnThyself/gifts).



> Like I could ever stay away from these two assholes in love. It's a terminal case, I'm afraid. Happy Halloween, fellow degenerates! Let's give our boys the angsty sugar they deserve. 
> 
> Full disclosure: I was inspired by a bag of assorted Tootsie Roll candies I bought to hand out to the kids brave enough to walk all the way up my horror movie driveway to my 170-year-old Manse.
> 
> Title of fic and chapter titles taken from the song by Loma.

Johnny has always known where the LaRusso kid lives. It’s taken him this long to get as far as the side gate leading into the courtyard. The whole summer passed him by, and all he could do was sit out in his car across the street, sometimes for a minute, sometimes for twenty. But he always pulled away, tires screeching out their lack of surprise that he’s such a pussy after all. Scared of a boy half his size or less. Scared of that boy’s mother, who looks like she could fight, too, if she had to. With Daniel LaRusso for a kid, she’d definitely have to. Some people are trouble magnets and some people are the trouble. Johnny’s been both all his life. Sometimes one, sometimes the other. Usually both at once.

The pool surprises him, its emptiness like an eye put out. Usually you can see the reflection of the water undulating along the stucco like some kind of psychedelic dream. That’s California for you, even from the cheap seats. Johnny remembers them well. It wasn’t so long ago he and Laura Lawrence lived in a place almost exactly like this one. The life they’re living now still feels like some kind of game where they both pretend not to remember—hoping the other one still does, too. They were happy living this way. They had nothing but each other and a half-filled pool rumoured to contain a high concentration of toddler piss. Now it feels like they only have each other in secret, in exchange for having everything else, the endless pristine water of the pool only one of a thousand gracious empty things. It’s always been a bad trade. The worst possible.

Johnny wonders if LaRusso is happy. He might have been, maybe, if it wasn’t for Johnny. Tonight is a night for remembering that, too. Though he doesn’t really feel like pretending he doesn’t. He remembers Halloween 1984 like it’s someplace he will never fully escape. He can almost feel the strange weightiness of the greasepaint over his face and throat, smooth and smothering, his eyelashes heavy with the mascara Bobby had borrowed from his sister because Johnny’s eyelashes are so pale they stood out against the black hollows of his eye makeup. He can still remember how they looked like fluttering moth antennae until he’d clumsily blotted them out. He’d picked leftover scunge out of his eyelashes for days afterward, until there they were again, bright and delicate against his blackened eye. Like he’d had to keep wearing his costume as some kind of penance. It wasn’t his worst black eye. It wouldn’t be his last. But he knows it’s the one he’ll remember longest. It matched LaRusso’s, only the kid didn’t give it to him. There will always be something wrong about that. Like he hadn’t earned his touch. Like there was some way to do that he hadn’t figured out because it didn’t have anything to do with fists.

Johnny knows which number door the skinny Jersey kid lives behind. Ask him how he knows, and he’ll answer you with knuckles in wordless denial. It takes him just as long to make his way up the stairs and down the walkway to number 20 as it did for him to finally get out of his car and across the street to the wooden gate that doesn’t even have a lock, just a latch. Like nobody here has anything worth protecting. He touches the door like maybe it has a pulse to check before resorting to more drastic measures. He caresses it and presses his fingers down, and then knocks on it too hard before he loses his nerve, like he’s defibrillating the damned thing. But he has to strike hard here even if he strikes out. He doesn’t know what he’s aiming for, exactly—but he does know who.

Daniel answers the door holding a bowl of candy pretty much bigger than he is. Johnny hasn’t seen him since graduation, but nothing’s changed. He still looks like a baby animal that bites. Larusso’s holding onto his summer tan easy, and he has the kind of skin that probably won’t relinquish it completely before it’s time to burnish him bronze again. Layer by layer over time, and he won’t fade much at all. Not for the first time Johnny thinks about how California loves LaRusso more than he knows. He doesn’t have to burn to earn that deep glow like Johnny does at the beginning of every summer. Johnny can picture him old and brown as an antique table. Ancient as hell but with those same Bambi eyes. Those will never get old. He’ll die with them wide open and wet with feelings he’s too stupid to hide better.

Those big baby browns widen right now, even before he fully starts to say, “Hey, hello, Happy Hallow—” Stuttering and astonished, his lanky limbs kind of losing track of themselves as his mouth falls open. It’s full of something already. A lollipop. It contorts LaRusso’s cheek in a way that sends a confusing frisson of… _something_ down Johnny’s spine as he reaches out just in time to catch the bowl awkwardly against his T-shirted chest.

A few fun sized candy bars go flying, and he’s about to make a joke about Daniel handing out his own twins, but he stops himself just in time. This is the type of joke only friends make to each other. Mutual affectionate assholeishness of the kind they don’t share and maybe never will.

After everything went down, Johnny isn’t even fully sure all the time whether he has that with his old friends. They’re still working it out. But they have something to work _from_ , unlike him and this pint size ball of fury right here. He looks soft. But he’s anything but. Even in his jogging pants and slightly cropped hoody with the cut off arms. One pantleg is rolled up, revealing one taut, tensile calf, the delicate knob of knee, a flash of smooth brown thigh flexed with tension. Johnny doesn’t have to look hard to see the scar. He’d heard about the surgery, his mom quietly paying the bill and hiding it from Sid, one of a thousand secret indiscretions she’s shielded Johnny from without fully understanding them. The scar still looks tender and angry, something like LaRusso himself. Johnny doesn’t look hard. But he sees.

“What the hell are you doing here?” LaRusso’s voice is the same as always. Rough and ready Jersey boy that won’t go down easy or stay there when he does. Johnny relishes the accusatory tone that wavers between confused and wary. He doesn’t have a good answer. Not one that will make sense in words.

“I was around,” he says instead. “Had nothing better to do so I thought I’d drop in.”

“King Karate has nothing better to do on Halloween night than cruise around Reseda.”

“Guess not, since that’s you now, right?”

“Oh, right, I forgot. Heavy the head and all that.”

“What?” Johnny asks, shaking his head. “You always say the weirdest stuff, LaRusso. It makes you kinda hard to hang out with.”

“Oh, is that what this is?”

“Maybe.” Johnny looks at him long and hard. When Daniel just shuts up for once, sucking on his candy like it’s his first or last meal for a while, studying Johnny's face like he's the answer key to the SATs, Johnny can’t help but drop his gaze down to the obscene bob of the paper stick poking out of LaRusso’s pursed lips. He grapples for the upper hand. Somebody’s got to have it. Doesn’t matter who between them anymore, exactly, but Johnny still prefers to be the one even now. Though he has a feeling they'll always swap back and forth like Daniel's Halloween treat between his cheeks. “What flavour is that?” He leans forward, sniffing. “Smells like red.”

“Yeah.” Daniel grimaces, leaning back, rolling the candy from one side of his mouth to the other. Johnny can see the translucent red gleam, the glisten of sugar on Daniel’s pouty lips. “The cherry ones taste like cough syrup. I hate 'em, but I still eat 'em so they won’t be all I have left at the bottom of the bowl tomorrow.”

“I don’t know,” Johnny says, dropping his gaze back to Daniel’s candy-stuffed mouth. Whether it’s fully conscious or not, he mimics LaRusso’s signature move, pressing the tip of his tongue to the inside of his bottom lip, pushing it out, then rolling his lip into the curl of his tongue-tip to moisten it. “I kinda like cherry flavoured stuff,” he says, dropping his voice. He doesn’t know why he does that, only that it feels real natural. There is a word for what he's doing, but he doesn't remember what it is. Johnny has always been more of a doer than a namer. 

Daniel stares at him, mouth falling slightly open. Johnny can see how red his tongue is, the lamplight gleaming on his deep wet interior. It looks like sleek velvet. LaRusso doesn’t blush right away. It’s like a delayed reaction, or something—and Johnny can’t say for certain where it begins, or even where it ends. He just sees Daniel flush. Like a girl. Or not like a girl, maybe. Like a boy under the gaze of another boy who refuses to drop his eyes and shy away. Johnny’s started something here, and they both know it. Johnny will never back down, and if he knows LaRusso, which in some strange way he knows he does—he won’t back down either. He’d rather die. Only that’s not on the cards tonight. The Death card has already been played between them. And Johnny’s mom used to be into all that New Age shit, so he knows that Death in tarot isn’t really death at all. It’s change. 

“Who do you think you’re talking to, man?” LaRusso says, scowling, but somehow still poutier than any boy Johnny has ever seen. “Do I look like a member of the cheer squad to you?”

“I know exactly who I’m talking to.” Johnny leans against the doorway, holding the bowl of candy aloft like he’s teasing the kid sister he never had. Or maybe the kid sister of one of his friends who he’s starting to notice in some way that’ll get him punched if they find out. “Now, are you gonna let me in? I can stand here all night, but you look like you’re freezing. What is it, laundry day and you forgot half in the dryer? And besides, I’m the one with the candy. You don’t wanna disappoint all those little kids just because you have no manners.”

“Shut the hell up, man. Get in here, if you gotta. Far be it from me to close the door in the late, great champ’s face on the night of the living whatever.”

Johnny smiles then, that oddly fond jerk smirk only Daniel is capable of bringing out in him. He doesn’t know what it looks like, but he can feel it. He can taste it, like the kind of candy that tricks you into thinking it’s sweeter than it is until it gets under your tongue and between your teeth. He swings the candy bowl back down into LaRusso’s grip. His stomach drops a little when he sees the other boy flinch, but he takes the candy warily, eying Johnny like a warning before turning back inside. Johnny figures that’s the only invitation he’s gonna get. And it’s a better one than he hoped for, to tell the truth. He didn’t even have to stick his foot in the door. He wore his heavier sneakers just in case, but now he toes them off without undoing them and leaves them on the mat beside the door where they can tangle up with LaRusso’s well-worn Nikes. Lawrence and LaRusso, barefoot. It feels like how it’s meant to be.


	2. This Is Your Only Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Johnny smiles then. So sweetly. Like a choirboy who just so happens to be a daredevil by night.

Daniel LaRusso is supremely stupid. He’s spent way too much of his life thinking a lot of dumb shit. The dumbest of the dumb was when he’d thought he and Johnny Lawrence were gonna be friends after the All-Valley. The terrifying blond handed Daniel the trophy with tears in his eyes, his face cracked open and dripping emotion in a way that made him seem truly human for the first time since they’d met. Said those three words Daniel can’t forget. Sometimes he thinks he’ll remember them on his deathbed, and he’ll go to the sweet yadda yadda with Johnny Lawrence’s surprisingly dulcet tenor ringing in his ears like the Judgement Bell: _You’re alright, LaRusso._ What could God really say to him after that? Johnny Lawrence thinks he’s alright. But then it never came to anything other than a wary lack of confrontation. A respectful avoidance. Blue eyes cast askance in the hallways. Brown eyes always searching, even when they’d found what they were looking for. Daniel got used to it. Or maybe he never really did. A part of him just kept waiting. The part of him that isn’t shocked right now. He’s kinda pissed at that part of himself, the dumb puppy part so eager to get kicked in the gut again.

Daniel knows there’s no way Johnny can tell he’s glad to see him, but he is. He’s just caught off guard. Embarrassed. He gets surly when he’s embarrassed. Lippy. It’s a lifelong malady. But for some reason it seems to be putting Johnny at his ease, judging from the way he struts into Daniel’s space like he owns it. Daniel watches him from the corner of his eye as he hops over to the fridge to retrieve a couple of cans of Sprite. Johnny looks around at the nothing much, the flickering light from the walkway pouring through the slats of the blind to hit his platinum blond hair intermittently. That hair. It doesn’t look real, like the way stars look out in the desert with nothing to drown them out. Stars are mostly dead light, but Johnny’s hair is a supernova.

Daniel catches the puzzled look on his ex-rival’s face as he half-tosses the sweating can of soda into Johnny’s big hand. “You don’t have much stuff. Or, like. Any.”

Daniel flushes and shrugs. “Well, you know how it is. You miss one power bill and the repo man comes to collect.”

Johnny stares at him. “What?” His brow furrows. “Oh, I get it: you’re kidding. Because you think I don’t know how stuff like power bills and shitty furniture work.” He takes the soda and cracks it open, catching the foam quickly between his pretty pink lips as if it’s a beer at a rager and not soda in a lonely boy’s living room, but not before the sugary liquid dribbles a single rivulet down his muscular throat. Daniel can see Johnny’s pulse hammering away as he tilts his head back to take a swig, a vein leaping in his neck that looks kind of delicious beneath the sheen of cold Sprite.

Daniel swallows, and looks away. He doesn’t know where thoughts like that come from, but they certainly seem to happen a lot when Johnny Lawrence is around. “Something like that, Encino Boy. Why don’t you take a seat while we still have a sofa, hey? I was in the middle of watching something when you interrupted.”

“Oh, excuse me, Princess. I didn’t realize I was getting in the way of your stories.”

“I’ll let it slide, just this once,” Daniel quips without missing a beat. It’s not like Johnny hasn’t called him that before. It doesn’t really bother him even though maybe it should. He thinks of it as rising above it, but something flutters inside of him somewhere at the possibility that the word is less an insult and more of a pet name. Which, what the hell. He’s not looking to get adopted, here. “As long as you pipe down. This is the best part.”

Johnny rolls his eyes, but he buttons that pretty lip of his, taking up as much space on the couch as he possibly can, the jerk. Not that Daniel takes up much himself, but he’s been spending the night spread out, and now he’ll have to contain his gawky limbs within a single cushion-span, aching knee or no aching knee. He hopes Johnny hasn’t really registered the half-thawed bag of frozen peas Daniel tossed aside to answer the door. He doesn’t want to come across as some kind of wimp, still milking a nearly year-old injury, if he rounds up a couple months. It’s pretty lame, he knows. But it is what it is. Denial doesn’t heal a damned thing. He knows that for free.

Daniel hops over to the beaten down couch and lets his weight fall back into the groove he wore into it while he was recovering from his surgery. He props his bad leg up on the battered coffee table next to the candy bowl, not bothering to pull his pantleg down. After all, why the hell should he? This is his shithole apartment Johnny barged his way into. If he doesn’t like it, he doesn’t have to look. Daniel snorts inwardly. The idea of Johnny Lawrence the golden demi-god of Encino eyeing up his exposed chicken leg is purely ridiculous. Daniel winces, adjusting his ankle so his leg stretches out straight. The knee’s been good, mostly, but today is one of the not so good ones. Does this goddamn kid have some kind of bat signal for when Daniel’s physically compromised or something? Sheesh. He glances sidelong at his so-called guest, NOT to get another eyeful of him pulling chastely on his soda like the black sheep at a Christian family fun day.

Daniel has to admit that Johnny’s not really a kid anymore. He’s a lot different than Daniel, who honestly hasn’t had to buy a bigger size of clothes since he was 14. He still wears stuff he had back then. His ma doesn’t really believe in buying new clothes unless something has actually worn out completely now that it doesn’t seem like outgrowing it is much of a problem, so Daniel still wears leftover kid clothes at 17 years old, but only when no one’s around to see him. Johnny, on the other hand. He’d looked pretty much like a man by the time Daniel met him. Nothing’s changed too much. But there is this… subtle increase in muscle mass and bone density. He’s taller, too. His neck is starting to catch up to his nose. Talk about laundry day and half-dressed. Johnny’s shirt is paper thin. Daniel can count every single abdominal contour, the flex and surge of Johnny breathing. If it wasn’t for the layer of checkered flannel shirt hanging open over top, Daniel wonders if Johnny’s pert nipples might press right through that paper tissue undershirt.

He really shouldn’t be thinking about that. He squeezes his thighs together, giving himself a warning where he needs it. The pressure doesn’t help much.

Daniel is glad for the faint strobing effect of the horror movie he has turned down low on the staticky rabbit-eared boob tube. It easily camouflages his flush. But he’d better cool it staring at the guy even from his side-mirror or the television light won’t be able to help him conceal what happens next. It wouldn't be the first hard-on he’s gotten over Johnny Lawrence, but it might end up being his most embarrassing.

His jaw clenches just thinking about it, cracking the dwindling Tootsie Pop like a tooth. He crunches it down to nothing, his mouth flooding with chocolate toffee saliva mixed with the godawful cherry cough drop flavouring. He tastes like he’s been kissing the medicine cabinet. Which shouldn’t embarrass him, but with Johnny so close he can feel the heat radiating off of his jeaned thigh like some kind of human beach stone hoarding sunlight, it matters for some reason. Daniel focuses on Duane Jones stealing every single scene, even from the zombies, but no matter how hard he tries to ignore him, Johnny Lawrence steals it right back, just sitting there beside Daniel, doing nothing but sipping soda dregs and breathing. Daniel can smell the ghost of Johnny’s cologne. It smells expensive, but it isn’t. Daniel comes from the exact demographic of people who can recognise good old Aqua Velva a mile away. But on Johnny, it smells different. Richer. More alluring. Like there is some quality of Johnny’s skin and scent that alters the chemicals into something so delicious, Daniel feels like he’s getting hungry, but not for any meal he’s ever had. He swallows.

“I’m moving,” Daniel blurts, just to shut himself the hell up by talking, his signature move, interrupting a lull in the action where the ambient sounds of zombies moaning and chewing providing a soundtrack to their quiet co-existence. Yeah, good old motormouth LaRusso, at your service. He looks over at Johnny full on, the blond’s brilliant blue eyes locking onto his. Daniel does his best not to shiver. “That’s why the no stuff. This is my last night here.” He doesn’t know if he’s imagining it; maybe it’s a trick of the TV screen glow, but Johnny looks… slightly stricken. If Daniel didn’t know better, which he does.

“What?” Johnny says, his pale eyebrow crescents leaping up to meet the feathered swoop of his bangs. He hasn’t worn his black not-quite _hachimaki_ since the tournament, and his hair looks even softer let loose to play around his temples and curl over his ears. He has really cute ears, pink and curved like a pair of seashells. His freckles show up even in the odd luminance of Halloween TV Special light. He looks open and naked again, like that night where he almost died and Daniel was there only to watch, it felt like.

“Yeah, I mean, it’s cool. My mom’s looking after her uncle who’s real sick back home, and I don’t really have any college plans.”

“You’re going back to New Jersey, I guess?” Johnny says, and his expression changes. Like somebody drew the blinds and shut off all the lights. “That’s cool. I mean. California isn’t for everyone.”

Daniel stares back, blinking. “Jersey? No. Nah. I figured I’d stick around here. I mean, I’m not a kid anymore. I don’t have to follow wherever cockamamie place she goes next, you know? I’m too old for that. I’m just here to tie up lose ends for Ma before the first of the month. Make sure she gets her security deposit back. That kinda thing.”

Johnny nods, relaxing back into the sofa cushions, but his eyes are still as bright on Daniel’s. It’s like being watched by the ocean. The deepest darkest parts as well as the playful shallows. He looks relieved, and troubled by that somehow. It’s real confusing and Daniel doesn’t know what to think. “So you’re staying in the Valley?”

“Yeah, right here in Reseda. Mr. Miyagi and me, we’re starting up a business. It’s no big deal. I’m gonna be living with him. I _am_ living with him, but closing this place up makes it official. I’ll just have the one place. It feels good, you know? Feels right. This never really felt the way I wanted it to feel. I guess I never got over that empty pool,” he jokes. “Such a blow, finding out how many Californians gotta live without constant pool access.” He looks at Johnny, who is listening intently, chewing on his bottom lip as Daniel talks nonsense. “Not,” he adds softly, dropping his gaze. “That I’m a Californian. I know I’m not. Never will be. Transplant for life.”

Johnny doesn’t answer. He just keeps looking at Daniel like… Daniel doesn’t know what. He’s never had Johnny’s attention for this long without punching being involved. It’s oddly thrilling. Some kind of shivery heat scratches at his belly and liquefies there. But it’s also scary in a way Daniel doesn’t really want to figure out. He holds his breath and doesn’t counter it with an exhale the way it’s become his second nature since training with his ancient best friend. But the pressure feels good. It calms him down, if only by way of cutting off nourishment to his fevered brain.

Johnny shrugs, lifting one muscled shoulder and rolling his eyes again, like Daniel is a grade-A idiot. “So what? You don’t gotta be from here to live here, LaRusso. That’s kinda the point of California, right? A nation of invaders chasing the dream. Besides, transplants are… what’s that word where you’re too stupid to give up and quit like you should?” He rolls his eyes ceilingward, the pink tip of his tongue poking out as he searches the water-stained plaster for an answer. “Tenacious. That’s you.”

Daniel flushes. He doesn’t know what to say. That’s a real compliment. Specific to Daniel as a person. It’s busting his brain a bit. He feels like his heart might short circuit at any minute. “Johnny…” He says the other boy’s name in a way that embarrasses them both, probably.

Johnny breaks the spell himself by reaching into the candy bowl, seeming to help himself to a treat. But he tosses another lollipop at Daniel, orange this time. Daniel catches it, unwrapping it right away for something to do so he can feel normal. He sucks the pop into his mouth, rolling it back and forth to get it nice and slick before stowing it in his cheek, ignoring the way the rough sugar stings the places in his mouth that are tender from too much candy. He does this to himself every year. Right now, it’s the one thing making him feel like himself. Even his hoody from seventh grade isn’t doing the trick. Maybe because of how he cut the arms off at the shoulder once he’d crossed the state line into Arizona and left the sleeves in the trash can of the Canyon Portal Motel, never looking back. Sleeves are for Jersey boys. Not California kids. Which is what Johnny is saying he is, now. Daniel likes that. Being something in Johnny’s eyes he didn’t realize he was until the other boy said it. Maybe he shouldn’t like that, but it’s too late.

“So...,” Johnny says, dropping his voice in a way that sends a thrill through Daniel from crown to… never mind where, exactly. “How many does it take?” Johnny leans in towards him, a confiding expression on his face that has an edge of teasing to it that kind of scares the smaller boy. Reminds him that this guy is still in some way one of those apex predators you see on nature programs. Dangerous. Wild. No matter how inviting their upturned bellies look when they’re lounging around on the Savannah.

Daniel blinks. He’s definitely lost the plot somewhere between Johnny’s gleaming incisors and the curve of his thick collarbone still slightly sheened with sweat, even this long after the sun’s gone down. “How many what?”

Johnny smirks, flicking his gaze down to Daniel’s candy-swelled mouth. “Licks. You know. To get the center of the Tootsie Roll.” Johnny leans even closer, his soda-sweet breath ghosting Daniel’s cheekbone. “That’s where the good stuff is.”

“Oh yeah?” Daniel says with a laugh, leaning away. Playing it off like a joke. It’s a joke, right? Just not a mean one. He doesn’t think. But he doesn’t know what other kind there is. And it feels risky to take it any more seriously. The proximity. The heat and lowered voice. It’s not mean, maybe. But it’s dangerous.

“Yeah, pretty sure.” Johnny studies his face. Daniel doesn’t know what he’s showing him, but it seems to be interesting enough that the blond’s gaze doesn’t so much as waver.

Daniel swallows around the sweet globe he’d pretty much put into his mouth on command, not really sure what he was agreeing to. Kind of feeling like maybe he’d agree to anything right about now. “Then why don’t you have one yourself?”

Johnny smiles then. So sweetly. Like a choirboy who just so happens to be a daredevil by night. That smile has been confusing Daniel since the night he and Mr. Miyagi set foot into the Cobra Kai dojo for the fateful agreement that led them here. “It’s the last one in the bowl,” Johnny continues, shrugging as if he isn’t about to say something completely mindboggling. “I figured we could share it.”

Daniel can feel his stupid Bambi eyes pop open wide and then sort of get stuck there for a second, like he’s paralyzed. But then his mouth, as usual, catches right up with him and then some. “Uh, okay? I don’t really know what the hell you’re talking about, Blondie, but—”

Johnny makes an impatient sound like he can’t believe how stupid Daniel is, and before Daniel knows what’s happening, Johnny’s got him by the front of his shirt, yanking him toward Johnny’s chest as his other hand grabs for the paper stick poking from Daniel’s mouth. Johnny yanks on that, too, pulling it out of Daniel’s mouth in a way that isn’t exactly gentle. It kind of _hurts_ , snagging on his bottom lip—but before he can really get out the squawk of confused protest he’s trying to let out, Johnny’s mouth covers his completely. His tongue is a warm silken shock, his lips firm and relentless. He kisses like he fights, only more tender. He kisses like he would fight if Kreese had never got his hands on him. Daniel melts into him even as he fights back with tongue and tooth, pushing at Johnny’s chest, but also grabbing onto that ricepaper T-shirt for dear life. Johnny tastes like Sprite and sea salt. Like he’s spent the day at the beach. Like he’ll spend his whole life there with Daniel loping across the sand just to get to him and under his perfect gleaming skin. Just to let Johnny knock him down. Daniel will spend his own life getting right back up again if only these arms are there to catch him with a fist or a kiss. It doesn’t really matter which, even now, when he’s had both.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter to go! I said I'd write two initially, but three feels right. Thanks for reading, you lovelies. We are a small and tenacious band of shippers! I'm so happy to be here.


	3. Look At Me Right Now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Say I wanna believe you,” Daniel says, his voice low, deeper than Johnny’s, or at least more roughly made. “I’m gonna need a reason, Johnny.”
> 
> “A reason?”
> 
> “Yeah, a reason why you aren’t gonna hurt me again, so I can believe you.” Daniel lays his free hand against Johnny’s heartbeat. “I wanna believe you.”

LaRusso tastes like candy, but only on the surface.

Beneath the artificial sweetness, his personal flavour is a deeper truth, something strange and secret Johnny wants to believe only he can taste. Is it oregano and warm, rich olive oil steeped into Daniel’s DNA over centuries and brought over in suitcases from the Old Country? Or is it something else—something green. Smoky and vegetal, a word Johnny didn’t realize he knows, but it comes to him like magic. Whatever is, Johnny can’t get enough. He suckles and kisses and licks his way towards that warm wet center that under the candy coating is pure LaRusso. His hands wander over shoulder blade, spine, hip. He wants to touch everything. Everything that makes LaRusso himself.

Johnny inhales him. Daniel kisses him back with the kind of hunger that actually feels like a full response to Johnny’s needy mouthwork. He’s always felt like he should hold back with girls. Always too much, too fast, too rough. And although Daniel looks just as delicately made as many of the girls Johnny has tried this on, there is nothing about him that makes Johnny forget for single second that Daniel LaRusso is another boy. The supple strength of his lean body. The way his skin smells underneath the cheap soap and drugstore shampoo. The particular way he angles his jaw. All of it is masculine. Just… different.

All of him is _different_. From his dark bronze skin to his comically huge Bambi eyes to the crooked slightly bucktoothed smile that lights up his whole stupid face. _Megawatt_ , Johnny thinks. LaRusso is a floodlight. Nothing can run from him and get very far, make it back to the dark to cower in the shadowline. Johnny can’t hide a single thing, ugly or scared. Maybe there’s even something beautiful leftover there too, aching to be caught out. Longing to be illuminated. Hunted and seen. Johnny as he really is. He feels like maybe this obnoxious boy with the too-big eyes and even bigger mouth might be able to see it, and show him back to himself somehow. A crazy thought. A desperate one, even. But Johnny can’t lie about it, though he’ll hide it if he can. He can try.

Daniel’s fingers, curious and articulate, find the pulse points in Johnny’s throat. Map out the tensile thrum of his arteries. Stroke over the barely detectable scruff of yesterday’s hasty shave job. He’s so blond it takes this kind of close inspection to notice his stubble at all, and something about Daniel paying him this kind of attention makes him blush, and gasp a hum of pleasure into the other boy’s kiss-stung mouth. He wonders if LaRusso can feel it through his fingertips, the sound he pulls from Johnny like a delicate handkerchief from a secret pocket. _The way of the fist is not delicate_ , he hears a disturbingly familiar voice intone. But he shoves it away. It can’t reach him here. He won’t let it. Not where Daniel lives.

Daniel stiffens and pulls away when Johnny makes to drag him into his lap, his big hand skimming over the heated skin of LaRusso’s exposed knee. He feels tender scar tissue like ruined silk against his palm, and Daniel grabs his wrist. Not pushing away. _Holding_ him there, his long fingers digging into Johnny’s pulse-point in silent warning. It hurts. And it feels so good.

“Please…” Johnny breathes the fragile word against the velvet underside of Daniel’s earlobe, making the small fierce boy shiver against his mouth. He smells like desire remembering it should be afraid, but he says nothing back. Just breathes. Johnny hears his own voice, a tremulous ragged tenor. He feels like it’s never been the same since Kreese tried to choke it out of him for good. “Don’t,” he pleads softly, pressing Daniel close, his other hand finding the impossible length of nape. Equine, he thinks. Another word he knows in secret. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”

“Yeah, like I’d let you.” Daniel rears back, pushing at Johnny’s chest. He can feel the threat of fingernails digging in, smooth and blunt now, as if Daniel has stopped needing to chew them to the quick. Johnny doesn’t need to wonder why.

“I know you wouldn’t.” Johnny takes his hand away from the injured knee, capturing one of Daniel’s own wrists. He can encircle it completely, but he doesn’t press down harder than he needs to make him stay. “But that’s not why you’re not gonna have to.” 

Daniel chews his lip, thick dark lashes downcast for a few heartbeats before he lifts them to meet Johnny’s eyes. That Never-Back-Down Larusso Gaze. Used to be, Johnny would answer it with a smirk, a challenge. Now he just watches, waiting, open. Hopeful. He doesn’t know for what. For anything, really. Anything Daniel is willing to give him, or at least not snatch back once Johnny has his hands around it, pulling it close and possessive. LaRusso resists, but only because pushing Johnny’s buttons in any way he can seems to give him life. Johnny’s not mad about it. It tugs something deep inside of him. Not his heart, exactly. And not only his cock, which. Yeah. Okay. He’s starting to be able to admit it. With his eyes squeezed shut enough he doesn’t really have to face it.

“Say I wanna believe you,” Daniel says, his voice low, deeper than Johnny’s, or at least more roughly made. “I’m gonna need a reason, Johnny.”

“A reason?”

“Yeah, a reason why you aren’t gonna hurt me again, so I can believe you.” Daniel lays his free hand against Johnny’s heartbeat. “I wanna believe you.”

Johnny’s eyes widen and he’s transfixed by the way LaRusso looks into his eyes with an expression he’s maybe shown him only once before. It’s the one he wore when he was lifting his skinny arms into the pose of an elegant bird, ten seconds before he rose into the air on his mangled leg to kick Johnny in the face. Wide eyed. Vulnerable. Terrified, but somehow more powerful than a champion twice his size. Like being emotional is his superpower, or something, allowing him to become Johnny’s equal and then some. Johnny’s not so sure _he’s_ equal to this. But Daniel is waiting for a response, and it’s getting to be Now or Never territory. And his expression isn’t exactly the same as it was that night because this isn’t exactly a fight. It’s time for Johnny to give over. Finally just. Give in.

“Tell me why, Johnny,” Daniel says again, his lush mouth tightening, then going soft again. “I swear I’ll believe you. Anything you say, but it’s gotta be now, or you gotta leave. I can’t keep doing stupid things because of you.”

Johnny swallows, turning Daniel’s hand in his, the warm callused palm of his enemy upturned like the belly of a soft, sweet animal. “Because I like you,” he says, his eyes burning blue like the flame of an acetylene torch. “I always liked you. Even when I hated you.”

Daniel gasps softly, eyes widening and leaping back and forth between Johnny’s, but he doesn’t flinch under that astonished gaze. “You. Like me?”

Johnny nods. “Yeah. I mean, what was your first clue?” He gestures at their current position, Daniel still half pulled into his lap and only barely resisting. Johnny chuckles a little when Daniel’s eyes narrow, and he can tell the mouthy little twerp is about to argue with him. “Hey, you promised to believe me!” he cuts him off, pouting a little bit.

Daniel snaps his mouth shut, chewing his lips closed like he needs to physically _eat_ the sass he was about to serve Johnny—and it’s so fucking _gorgeous_ and Johnny is a goddamn goner if he wasn’t already. When he tugs LaRusso closer and presses his open mouth into the brown cup of Daniel’s hand, Johnny feels his pulse jump. Johnny presses his tongue to that leaping nerve, and then his teeth. Because he is no soft, sweet animal, and LaRusso knows that. He wants to remind Daniel of what will never change, even if Johnny kisses him with his lips instead of his fist.

“Come here, champ,” he says softly, returning his hand to its sentinel post on Daniel’s knee. Squeezing so gently, and then stroking with such tenderness, the injury Johnny gave to him that will never completely return to normal. “Let me kiss it better.”

“Kiss it better,” LaRusso grouses. “What am I, four years old?” But he melts into Johnny’s shirt like a popsicle in July. Johnny licks him right up, delving into his pliant mouth with even more of that hunger he’s been saving up for over a year now and counting. He swears he feels sand between his teeth. He swears he tastes blood. And those things are more romantic to him than any girly shared milkshake or hands accidentally bumping into each other rooting around in the same popcorn bucket. No need to throw Milk Duds when you’ve already punched each other’s lights out. Blood on the mat, that’s all they need between them to start this thing right. Johnny never knew romance could be like that. He’d never dared even dream it. Not so he’d realize it, anyway. He should be terrified. And he is. But he also isn’t.

When he tries it again, Daniel pretty much crane dives right into his lap, wincing when his sore knee doesn’t cooperate. But Johnny knows just what to do. He knows how to handle LaRusso, situating him so one coltish leg is curled around Johnny’s ass, pinned between him and the lumpy sofa cushion. The other leg he guides to stretch out straight along what’s left of the couch seat. LaRusso is some kind of limber. He can pretzel himself just right, so all the places they need to touch and squeeze and gaze at are within striking distance. Johnny cradles him on his lap, not even close to embarrassed anymore by the way he’s so hard for this Jersey twerp he sees stars, eyes open or shut tight. He knows Daniel can feel him—hard and thick and needy. But Johnny can feel him right back, just as hard and needy, if less thick. Which is fine with Johnny. He feels a kind of deep thrill knowing he’s so much bigger. Especially since he knows that when it comes to Daniel LaRusso, size has nothing to do with anything you’d think it does. Though he hopes Daniel doesn’t think the same way. That he likes how Johnny’s made. That it doesn’t scare him. He presses experimentally against the smaller boy, grinding up against him in a much less subtle way than he’d been doing. Nothing _accidentally_ about it. He takes Daniel’s pointy hips in his hands and pulls him harder against the bulge in his jeans.

“Whoah. Hey, okay. That’s. A lot.” Daniel struggles a little, blushing like a girl who doesn’t know for sure what boys have in their pants, but Johnny keeps his hands where they are. Not holding him down. Just not backing off.

“Relax, LaRusso.” His fingers find the bare skin above Daniel’s waistband, and he strokes it like he’s soothing some kind of nervous animal. Not that Johnny knows much about animals. He was never allowed to have one. “I’m not gonna do anything you don’t want me to.”

“Yeah, okay. But.” LaRusso huffs out a shaky little breath, his hands on Johnny’s chest. “What if. I don’t know what I want you to do.”

“Then we’ll figure it out, okay? Doesn’t have to be now. I’m having fun just messing around exactly like this. Are you?”

“Yeah. Yeah, Johnny. This is aces.”

“Okay, cool. Shut up and kiss me some more, then, LaRusso. Jeez. Anybody ever tell you you talk too—”

Daniel pushes his tongue back into Johnny’s mouth, and they melt together into the couch cushions. They keep messing around like that long after the badass hero on the television screen dies for no reason in stark black and white. Johnny’s never seen the ending. It’ll be years before he does, and Daniel won’t be there, otherwise he’d never see it. This is why: Daniel’s hands up his shirt. Johnny’s bruises on his collarbone, but not like before. Gifts not wounds. Their bodies, completely different but somehow the same. Even zombies beating down the door for real in Reseda couldn’t tear them away.

Daniel sighs when they ease off to catch their breaths, rubbing his heated face against Johnny's bicep, his hand snugged up under Johnny’s damp T-shirt to rest on his relentless heartbeat. Daniel is stretched out along Johnny’s side, the static from the TV filling the room with just enough light he can see how ridiculously gorgeous Johnny is with his kiss-stung mouth and his laser pointer eyes. Daniel tugs gently on the cowlick that is normally so flawlessly feathered. He wonders if anybody else knows about this charming defect in Johnny’s perfection. How it just makes him that much more appealing. The strands sift like silver plumage between Daniel’s fingers, and it makes his hand tremble a little with wonder. “Gotta say, this Halloween’s a big improvement on last year.”

Johnny flushes with shame and irritation, dropping his head back on the armrest to groan up at the ceiling. “Yeah, for me, too, smart guy. Your sensei handed me my ass. Not—” he adds hastily, pressing his hand momentarily over LaRusso’s squawk of protest. “—that I didn’t have it coming. I deserved that. Worse, probably.”

Daniel softens. “Yeah, well, you _got_ worse, didn’t you? And you didn’t deserve it. Don’t even say you did, or we _will_ start fighting again. Mercy, King Karate,” Daniel waves vaguely down at the knee propped up and curled over Johnny’s thigh. “I’m wounded over here, sheesh.”

“I’d offer to kiss it better again,” Johnny says with an eyeroll-sigh combination. “But I’m getting the feeling you’re milking this thing just so I will. I’m starting to feel used. Plus, your lips are really chapped now, squirt.” He grimaces and winces. "Don't you have any Chapstick? They make it in cherry, you know, your favourite—"

Daniel squawks again, and slips his hand down lower to tickle Johnny’s ribs, but Johnny is too stoic to admit defeat at the hands of his skinny opponent. Daniel gives up, and rests his cheek against one of Johnny’s impressive pecs. His heart thunders through Daniel’s skull like the incoming tide. He kind of feels soothed, like when he was a little kid and his ma would take him through the carwash because it was the only thing that would calm him down. “Why didn’t you just tell me, like, way earlier?” he asks quietly, looking up at the sharp underside of Johnny’s jaw without picking up his head from his new favourite place on earth. “What did you think I’d do, beat you up? I mean, c’mon.”

Johnny huffs out a laugh that’s half bitterness, half self-deprecation, his fingers going still in the back of Daniel’s hair. “C’mon yourself, LaRusso. No way you’d be mean about it. You and that bleeding heart of yours? But that’s exactly it.” He cups Daniel’s neck as he cranes it to look up into Johnny’s face, stroking over the soft place behind his ear with one thumb. “Once I started to figure out maybe I didn’t hate you so much as I. Liked you. I didn’t want that to be why you were cool to me about it. I didn’t want your pity. It never occurred to me you could. Feel the same way. But I guess I sure wasted a lot of time thinking that.”

Daniel flushes, absorbing everything Johnny says. It blows his mind a little. Okay, a _lot_. But he plays it cool, shrugging. “Nah. No such thing as wasted time when you end up where you wanna be.” Daniel gives him a squeeze, feeling Johnny’s syrup-warm muscles tense and release into his touch. “And it is, right? Where you wanna be.”

Johnny delivers him an imperious glare that somehow incorporates a knowing smirk. “What do you think, smartass?”

“I think Johnny Lawrence doesn’t do a damn thing he doesn’t wanna.”

Johnny’s smile drops, and he swallows. Daniel can see his prominent Adam’s apple moving in the half dark. “I’m gonna try not to, from now on. I wanna be how you see me.” He tilts Daniel’s chin, and there is something vulnerable in the way Johnny leans towards him with a question in his ocean eyes. Daniel meets him eagerly, kissing him slow and lingering, deep and wet and warm with a promise he doesn’t know the shape of yet. But Johnny said it was okay not to know. They don’t have to know a damn thing yet except how to open for each other like this in the Reseda night, All Hallows giving way to the eerie wee hours of All Souls Eve. It seems appropriate somehow, because doesn't _soul_ have everything to do with it? Everything to do with Johnny underneath him and Daniel in his arms. They fit. Who knew? But they do. 

He kisses Johnny Lawrence with his eyes wide open. _Look at me_ , he thinks. _Look me in the eye_. And without being told, Johnny does. Daniel is a goner in his dangerous arms. This could be his last night on earth like in some kind of movie and Daniel wouldn’t change a thing, not even to save his own life. He drifts with the scent of Johnny's evaporating aftershave. He drifts away and takes Johnny with him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that is the end of this beginning, Kind Readers. But our boys will be back very soon. Thank you for reading and the wonderful comments some of you have left. I deeply truly appreciate each and every one of you.


End file.
